UX/UI and Mobile App Design: Blip Energy

Blip is an energy company marketing a smart battery that can serve as a backup in an outage, requires no installation, and can power high energy devices while energy is expensive, then recharge while energy is cheap.

Overview:

Goal

Design a companion app for the smart battery "blipOne" to set it up, monitor it, and control its functionality.

Challenge

Prepare blip for its initial launch of blipOne via website improvements and mobile app design.

My Role

User interviews
Interaction design
Prototyping the app
Usability testing
Responsive breakpoints for the website

Defining the Problem

Blip's potential customers need a way to find information on the website that will help them choose whether this smart battery is for them. And once they own one, they need a way to control blipOne's functionality and track their energy usage.

Constraints

The battery needs to be set up via a mobile app, with the option to be managed via the app or a web-based dashboard, based on user preference.

App Design

Research

A general customer research effort doubled as a screener survey
I interviewed 7 of the 32 survey participants
I collected great stories of experiences with power outages, as well as specific needs and hopes for the product

Ideation

I like to include specific detail even in my initial sketches to help determine how information fits.

four quick paper and pencil sketches of different potential app screens

Next I do some cleaned-up sketches of potential wireframes to show my team and get feedback.

paper sketch of battery percentage screen

paper sketch of page managing devices attached to the blip

Evolution of the design

Selected iterations of the app dashboard, from earliest to latest:

Testing the Prototype

I prototyped the onboarding and a brief exploration of the dashboard (limited functionality) so that we could test the setup process. Much was left to the imagination since it could not work with the physical battery itself. But we could test some important things.

Are people willing and able to give information about their utility bill during the setup process?
Will users engage with switching their rate plan?
Are users able to complete the onboarding process successfully?
Is our language understandable and informative?
Are concepts presented clearly?
Are the contents presented in a reasonable, expected order?

I took notes during the first four usability tests. In only that short time, I saw a lot of patterns and was able to make several recommendations.

Some findings from this process:

Although users reported being confused, almost no one used the “I have questions” link offered on each page of the onboarding. I’ve recommended swapping that for the more traditional question mark or info icon so that people recognize it.
The company hopes to detect people’s wifi networks through their phones, but nearly everyone we interviewed was confused by this. I’ve recommended the company just do what’s expected and ask for wifi information.
People often don’t have immediate access to their electric bill, either someone else handles it or they’d have to go find their login details, so they report that they would leave the onboarding at this step and come back later. I noted this as a challenge for the product.
The expectation of feedback. People need to know that, once a device was plugged in, a notification, sound, color change, etc would let them know the app had registered it.
The setup of the product is really a pivotal point because it’s the first impression of something they’ve invested a lot of money in. It’s also likely to be one of the longest consecutive interactions users have with the app, requiring the most information input.

Conclusion

At this point I prepared to leave the project for another opportunity. I made careful notes of where I left off to hand off next steps to my replacement. I truly fell in love with this project over the months I was involved. I hope to help onboard the next UX Designer for blip when they make their next push forward on launching the product.